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When the tentative budget for furnishings has been made, and
the type of furnishing has been decided upon, the interesting prob-
lem of planning the furniture and its arrangement, room by room,
is next. Careful preliminary plans of orderly arrangement are
necessary for the creation of beautiful, comfortable rooms. Just
as the artist works with paints to compose a picture and the land-
scape designer uses plants, so the interior designer constructs with
furniture and accessories.

Balance is the basis of good furniture arrangement. Each of the
four sides of the room should seem about equally heavy to produce
a feeling of equilibrium; opposite walls in particular should balance
well. Each wall, too, should be balanced with equal weight on
each half; the highest part should usually be at the center.

Either formal or informal balance may predominate in a room,
Formal balance is appropriate with formal types of architecture
like the Georgian colonial. With formal balance centers of inter-
est such as fireplaces, sofas, or secretaries are often flanked by a
pair of chairs. Too many pairs of articles, however, are likely to
make a room appear stilted; a pair of sofas before the fireplace
and a pair of end tables holding a pair of lamps are sufficient*
Even a formal room seldom makes use of formal balance exclu-
sively, because some irregularity is necessary for relief and charm.
See page 240.

Informal balance is desirable in most houses and is a requirement
in unsymmetrical types of houses such as the early English, the
farm-house types, and the Modern. See page 104. A room with
irregular openings is more difficult to arrange than a symmetrical
room. It requires ingenuity to distribute the masses in such a way
that the room feels steady and balanced. When successful, how-
,ever, informal (occult) balance is likely to have more charm than
formal (symmetrical) balance.

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